Unbroken

Chapter 55

Loki walked into the healing room with one arm holding his bruised ribs and his other hand by his nose, trying to stop the bleeding. It had been several days since Loki found out about laufey's messages, and his training was becoming progressively more difficult and intense. Today he had been fighting Fandral, and he hadn't held back, so loki ended up loosing the fight and earning himself a bloody nose and a possibly broken rib.
One of the healers saw Loki and before he even said anything she turned around and called for Trinity.
"Trinity, your man is here" she called to the back room where Trinity often worked. Loki and Trinity had been together since Thor's celebration, and it was about the best thing that ever happened to Loki, but it was still hard to get used to hearing someone call loki 'Trinity's man' or call Trinity 'Loki's lady'
Trinity came out of the back room, at first with a smile on her face, but the smiled quickly dropped when she saw that Loki's face was covered in blood and that he was holding his ribs.
"Training" he told her, knowing she wanted an explanation. She nodded a bit and brought him over to a table and had him sit on it.
"You really need to be more careful" she said as she moved his hand away from his bleeding nose and covered it with a cloth to catch the blood until the bleeding stopped. Then Loki held the cloth to his nose as Trinity checked his ribs.
"I try, but it gets rough" he said. "There's not much I can do about it" he added while Trinity checked his ribs. She didn't say anything until she was finished.
"Well nothing is broken, but you're badly bruised. If you have to fight again, use a guard of some kind" she told him, taking the cloth off his nose so she could check the bleeding and see if it was broken. Loki didn't say anything as she fixed up his nose and bandaged it up.
"You're all set" she told him, he stood up and she took his hand. "Hey, seriously, be careful. I don't really like needing to fix you up like this every day" she said, half joking and half serious.
"I know, but I have to train" he said to her.
"Why? Aren't you on the counsel now? Do you often get into fights during those meetings?"
She asked him sarcastically.
"Of course not. Well, probably not, I've only been in one meeting so far. But either way, I have to be an adequate soldier, the counsel is supposed to represent the strength of the realm, I have to be able to fight" he told her as he felt his nose where she'd bandaged it.
"Well, I guess that makes a little bit of sense" she said "but tell me that you at least inflict a little bit of pain onto your opponents. I only ever see you coming back bloody and broken" she said. Loki gave her a look.
"Of course I do. I fight back pretty well, they all just have more experience with this" he told her. "Don't worry about me, these injuries barely bother me" he added. She sighed a little bit but nodded just the same.
"Alright, as you wish, I won't say anything more about it" she said. "How are you doing? Mainly concerning those messages from laufey" she asked him after a minute. He had told her everything the day after he found out that laufey had been contacting Odin.
"I'm fine. I was worried at first, but Odin made the good point that laufey can't get here, so I'm not really worried about it" he told her, and he wasn't lying this time. He really was fine, and he wasn't worried anymore.
"Good" she said. "I have to get back to work, I'll see you later" she said as she pulled him down to kiss him, then went back to work. Loki left the healing room and headed back outside, but as he was leaving the palace he got an odd feeling, he felt like he was being watched. he kept turning around to see if there was anyone in the hall with him, but the only people there were the guards. He had wanted to go out to practice throwing daggers, but when he went out he just couldn't shake the feeling that someone was following him and watching him, maybe because there were so many people around. He couldn't focus and was getting annoyed, so he went to find Thor to ask a favor.
"Hey, may I borrow a horse again?" Loki asked when he found Thor.
"Yeah sure, you can take Sleipnir again. Where are you going?" Thor asked, Loki stayed inside and alone most of the time, and Thor knew that Trinity was working so he couldn't be going to see her.
"I wanted to throw knives, but I keep feeling like someone is watching me and it's making me loose focus. I was thinking that if I went out where I could be alone it might shake the feeling" Loki explained. Thor nodded a bit.
"Alright, good luck" Thor said with a nod. Loki nodded back and went to the stable to get Sleipnir ready. Loki was liking Sleipnir more and more, he was easy to ride and the eight legs had become less disturbing. Loki also knew that if Sleipnir hadn't run off and gotten loki lost in the woods, he wouldn't have met Trinity, so his bitterness was wearing off a little bit.
Once loki got the saddle on the horse and put his daggers in the side satchel, he got on and rode off to get some space from the palace. He remembered the field next to the forest and decided that that would be a perfect place to practice, he could be out in the the open air, and he could use the tress of the nearby forest as targets.
Loki got off the horse and took out his daggers and started to practice, he felt better and knew that he was alone. Well, he thought he was alone. He had been practicing for about an hour when he heard something in the forest. He was pulling a knife out of a tree trunk when he heard what sounded very much like footsteps carefully trying not to make sound. He looked around the tree and into the forest but he didn't see anything. But something was off, he definitely heard someone, a person. He decided he'd had enough practice for the day, so he quickly gathered up all the knives and turned around to go back to Sleipnir, hoping to escape whoever was lurking there. but as soon as he turned around he was attacked. A dagger was thrown and he felt it pierce through his leg right below his knee, he fell to the ground, trying to swallow a scream.  He quickly turned over to try and see the attacker but he didn't see anything.  He pulled out a knife and forced himself to his feet, pain shot up his leg and blood trickled to the ground and stained the dirt. Loki took his eye off the forest for one second, but when he looked back up he saw his attacker charging him, and half a second later he was being tackled to the ground. Loki was glad he'd been training so hard, because he was actually able to fight back. Loki was at a great disadvantage though; he was bleeding, he was smaller, he was already pinned, and he'd been taken by surprise. Nevertheless he was able to put up a hard fight. he wrestled the attacker off of him but he wasn't able to keep him away, the attacker continued to fight, Loki was trying to defend but it was getting harder to stand and his enemy knew that. Loki wouldn't be able to fight for very long, and playing by the rules wasn't working for him, he was trying to out fight this man and he needed to focus on out thinking him, like he always did in the arenas on jotunhiem. They were close to the forest and loki knew he could use that, so he did the seemingly stupid thing and just turned and ran at top speed into the forest, his enemy right on his heals. At first it was a good plan, loki could More easily maneuver the tight spaces of the forest, but his enemy was growing tired of playing games with loki, he wanted the job to be done. Loki's head was spinning, he was bleeding quickly and he was becoming dizzy, his counter attacks were becoming less precise and he made a deadly mistake. Like with his first training session wth Thor, he left himself open, and his enemy didn't hesitate to take advantage of that. Loki felt a hard blow to his stomach as his enemy struck him with a fallen branch, the air was knocked out of Loki's lungs and he stumbled, he may have been able to stay on his feet but when he stumbled backwards he tripped over a root and fell on his back. He tried to get up, but his enemy was on top of him in seconds, he tried to struggle but he could barely move. His head was spinning from the fall, he couldn't breathe, his leg was bleeding a river, there was nothing he could do. The enemy crouched over Loki and got down in his face, his fingers locking around Loki's neck. Loki's heart was pounding now and his mind was racing, he knew if he didn't do something he would be strangled to death. His vision was becoming spotty, he felt the enemy squeezing his neck to end his life. His mind was racing to find a solution, and he finally saw it. His enemy was so sure he was going to win that he'd let his own guard down, Loki had a clear shot to his enemy's neck, and Loki still had his knife in his hand. He locked his fingers around the handle of the dagger and brought it up with the little force he could Muster, stabbing his enemy in the side of his neck. Loki felt his neck be released, he heard his enemy howl in pain, Loki pulled the knife out and stabbed him again, this time in the leg. The enemy's guard was now down and he was unable to fight because of where Loki had injured him, so Loki took the opportunity. Loki pushed the enemy off him again and forced himself to his feet, then forced himself to run. Well it felt like running, but really he was just stumbling more quickly than normal. Nevertheless, he stumbled his way out of the forest and over to his horse, he fumbled to untie Sleipnir but eventually he got the ropes undone, and it was only then that he dared to look back. Sure enough, his enemy was still trying to chase him, though he was stumbling too, and much slower than Loki. Loki pulled himself Onto Sleipnir's back and urged him to run toward the palace. Loki's head was becoming foggier by the second, but he could feel the wind hitting his face and he knew that he was on his way back to safety. He just hoped he'd make it back alive.